Nahum 2:11- 12 Silence of the Lions

And as you can see, I called this the silence of the lions. What would it? What am I mimicking? Silence of the lambs, right? OK, and we're going to see why this is in a minute or two. Here we go. OK, so as is our custom, we're going to read the end of chapter one and all of chapter two so that we can get the context.

So this is God's word. Nahum chapter one, verse 15. Behold, on the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace, celebrate your feasts, owed you to pay your vows for never again will the wicked one pass through you.

He's cut off completely. The one who scatters has come up against you. Man, the fortress. Watch the road. Strengthen your back. Summon all your strength for the Lord will restore the splendor of Jacob like the splendor of Israel, even though devastators have devastated them and destroyed their vine branches.

The shields of his mighty men are colored red. The warriors are dressed in scarlet. The chariots are enveloped in flashing steel when he is prepared to march and the cypress spears are brandished. The chariots race madly in the streets.

They rush wildly in the squares. Their appearance is like torches. They dash to and fro like lightning flashes. He remembers his nobles. They stumble in their march. They hurry to her wall and the mantlet is set up.

The gates of the rivers are open and the palace is dissolved. It is fixed. She is stripped. She is carried away and her handmaids are moaning like the sound of doves beating on their breasts. Though Nineveh was like a pool of water throughout her days.

Now they are fleeing. Stop, stop. But no one turns back. Plunder the silver, plunder the gold, for there is no limit to the treasure. Wealth from every kind of desirable object. She is emptied. Yes, she is desolate and waste.

Hearts are melting and knees are knocking. Also, anguish is in the whole body and all their faces grow pale. And this is where we'll concentrate today. Where is the den of the lions and the feeding place of the young lions where the lion, lioness and lion's cubs prowled with nothing to disturb them?

The lion tore enough for her cubs, killed enough for her lionesses and filled his lairs with prey and his dens with torn flesh. Behold, I am against you, declares the lord of hosts. I will burn up her chariots in smoke.

A sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the land and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard. I don't know about you, but that is a frightening, frightening verse set of verses, I should say.

You don't want to be the one who the Lord is against. So let's do a quick recap of chapter two, verses seven through 10. Last week, we talked about God decreeing or fixing that Nineveh and Assyria would be stripped of her wealth and her people carried away.

And then disperse throughout the land. So when God says something, it's a guarantee it's going to happen. It's not possible that it doesn't happen or else he wouldn't be God. And he's giving the Assyrians what they did to other people.

OK, he's going to disperse them throughout the land the way they did the other nations to basically eradicate any of their genealogies and keep them from perpetrating or not perpetrating, perpetuating.

Thank you. Perpetuating their lineage and their their their nationality. Their handmaids would moan like doves, which reminds us of Jonah. So what does the name Jonah mean? Dove. Right. So here the handmaids, the women in who are inside the city walls of Nineveh, this what this wall was a mile wide.

They're moaning like doves. You have here when in the morning, when the when the pigeons and the doves are like it's constant. Right. So this brings us back to Jonah. Remember, Nahum is Jonah part two.

It's a continuation of the story where Jonah went in, preached repentance to the Assyrians. They repented. Now they've turned their back completely on God, went back to their old ways. And now God is going to bring destruction upon the Assyrians.

Assyria was a lush land with bodies of water and rivers, but would now be drained and unable to stop. Think about where you would set up a camp. Right. If you were trying to grow vegetables or a garden, you would want it to be where there's a water source.

Water is a source of life. It it it feeds the it waters the garden, feeds the lawn. Right. Water is essential to life. Nineveh and Assyria was a source of life for so many people, so much industry came out of it.

But now it's going to be completely plugged up. Stop. Their wealth, silver, gold, jewelry would be plundered and then used by the means to eventually fund the building of the Jews wall and the temple.

How ironic all the stuff that they stored up over the years after plundering all these nations is now going to be used to rebuild the wall. You know that in the book of Nehemiah. Assyria was emptied of all its wealth and power.

She was left desolate. And we saw last week how this was a foreshadowing of what would happen to Israel when they turned their back on God and crucified their own messiah. Jesus says, I leave to your temple desolate.

Desolate means empty, cleaned out. Right. And then Jesus said to them, not one stone will be left upon another. I'm going to come in and destroy your temple. Finally, their strength, will, determination and desire was crushed as their hearts melted, their knees knocked and their bodies anguished and their faces grew pale.

OK, when God comes out and says that he's against you and he brings another army larger than your own to come in and destroy you. Physically, you're going to feel it. OK. All right. Let's get into chapter two, verse 11.

Nineveh as a Lion’s Den and a Taunt of Judgment

Where is the den of the lions and the feeding place of the young lions? Where the lion, lioness and lion's cub prowled with nothing to disturb them. Just at first glance, when you look at the lion, lioness and the lion's cub.

To me, this means men, women and children. This is for everyone in Assyria, everyone who's contained in that wall in Nineveh. The closing section is a taunt. Again, God is taunting the Assyrians. It's a taunt song in which the striking image of a pride of lions that meets with destruction is employed to describe the imminent reversal of Nineveh's fortunes.

God is the author of Nineveh's humiliation and disappearance. Similar to a lion's den, Nineveh has been a place of security for its people, as well as a repository filled with the plunder of conquered peoples.

Now, Nineveh has itself been destroyed and robbed of people and wealth. So what made Nineveh so powerful and such a admired by some of the nations around them? Their wealth, them being a watering source, is now gone.

It's going to be desolate now. It's not gone right when Nahum is saying this. OK, but when God says something, it's as good as it being done. It will happen. Using the rhetorical questions and comparing Assyria to lions, to lions securing their den after killing others.

Yahweh talks as though their judgment is complete already. Those who think they have nothing to fear will cease to exist. There is no fear of God before their eyes. When we look at the landscape of the United States right now, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

They wholesale kill babies in the womb to the tune of 3000 plus per day. They try to redefine marriage. They try to redefine the building blocks of society and the way God said he was going to populate the earth.

And now they're going to redefine that. So so that it's a man and a man or a woman and a woman or three women or three men or two men, one woman. It's anything you want. When you rebel against the creator, he's going to give you over to a depraved mind to do what you ought not to be done or not to be done.

OK, Yahweh now is against them. Assyria will have no more victims. They will be the victim. They will be erased. And their judgment will continue as Yahweh later issues a woe oracle against them. That's going to be chapter three.

In the beginning, God starts off. Nahum starts off saying, woe to you, Assyria. Again, this is going to be parallel to what Jesus says to the Pharisees. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. And he pronounces eight woes upon them.

And those eight woes are in contradistinction to the eight beatitudes. Nahum responded to the envisioned destruction of the city with a taunt. Where now is the lion's den? Where'd you go? His rhetorical question implied that the capital no longer existed.

The symbolism of the lions, then, and the lion, lioness and cubs, young lions is uniquely appropriate. Like a lion hunting for his lioness and cubs, Assyria had plundered other nations. Assyrian kings prided themselves in their ability to kill lions in lion hunts.

You might notice the pun there. Maybe you want pride. All right, here we go. I didn't sneak that in there. That's another commentator. I just happened to see it. And the kings likened their own ferocity and fearlessness to that of lions.

For example, Sinatra, who was a king in Assyria before Ashurbanipal, this was earlier on in the days when when they were coming in against Israel, not Judah. Sinatra boasted of his military fury by saying, like a lion, I raged.

It's it's so incredible to see all of this stuff is recorded in their annals in history. So as I read this prophecy by Nahum, I recognize that there's a historical reality that goes along with it. And I think a lot of times people, they read the scriptures and then they read history and think that they're two separate things, when in reality, they're one thing.

This is happening at the time Assyria is destroying other nations and then it is conquered. This is a historical fact. We have archaeological digs, which we're going to see in a minute, that show pictures of lions.

And then we have even in their own writings saying, I am like a lion raging. Right. So here Nahum's prophecy is pertinent to what's actually going on in history, which I love. Lions were frequently pictured in Assyrian reliefs and decorations.

No wonder Nahum likened Nineveh to a lion's den, but now their lairs would be empty. No longer would there be lions, cubs and ripped carcasses. The lioness is also associated with the goddess Ishtar across the ancient Near East, and Ishtar was the major goddess of the Assyrians.

So Nahum may allude to her powerlessness here. The prophet views Assyria as a once dominant, preying lion, but now no more than a horse. So here we see the Assyrians esteemed Ishtar, that was their god.

And she was the god known as a lion, but also the god of reproduction. So they they worshipped her and she was also a god of war. So you had these certain things that God is now coming in and saying, I'm going to crush you.

I am the god of war. I am the one who perpetuates, perpetuates my people in the land. From the earliest times, Mesopotamian ideology portrayed the killing, the king killing a lion, which was a threat to domestic animals and herds.

A stone builder from Irkuk, carved about 3000 BC, shows one man spearing a lion and another shooting one with an arrow. From their dress, they are generally believed to be kings or leaders. We'll learn about this in a second.

The design of the Assyrian royal seal shows the king dispatching a lion in hand to hand combat and reliefs from Ashurbanipal's palace present the same scene as the climax of an artificially contrived lion hunt.

The danger to the king implied by the dying lion's claws indicates that this was a formulaic scene. Assyrian kings such as Ashurbanipal boasted, I am a lion in attacking their enemies. Again, we have so much historical background behind this of the Assyrian kings claiming to be like lions.

So this is very pertinent that Nahum would come and address them as a lion. And God says, you, the lion, you will be no more. You're no longer going to be able to tear up my people. So what the king would do, he would stage.

How do we how would I put it? He would bring lions into a to append up area, and then the king would stand up on the top of the wall and shoot arrows down and kill the lions as if he's going to protect all the people behind the wall from any of our ferocious enemies.

And he did this as a display of his power. Meanwhile, they were in a closed pen, right? All he had to do is take a couple of good shots and hit the lions. And that supposedly established his power over the enemies around him.

I can tell you this, he'll be no match for God. He was no match for God. He can shoot all the arrows he wants. No one is going to reverse what God has done or said. A ritual lion hunt took place each year during the New Year festival when the king acted out a number of symbolic roles, including the killing of lions outside the walls of Nineveh.

This was a public performance to show that the king was able to protect his subjects from evil. War reliefs found in the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh show 18 lions being released in a stacked out area because Nineveh had 18 main gates.

And the king was going to show how in the slaughter of those lions, he was powerful enough to protect the city from evil invaders and also to maintain the safety of the approach roads. So we can go back into history.

And these are the things that they would actually carve on their walls or include on something called an obelisk. This is a tall stone with four sides, and they would they would write out certain historical things that they wanted to be remembered.

So this is obviously a king who's on a horse killing a lion. Then you have the king choking the lion. Now, I doubt that actually happened. Right. So this is, you know, again, kind of like propaganda, you know, a depiction of how strong our kings are.

They're going to come in and they'll choke the lion. You have nothing to fear. The king is here. Right. And what is he doing? He's setting himself up as God. God is the only one who can protect us to that to that extent.

We may think that we have protection. The United States may think we can protect ourselves from all our our enemies. Not so. If God, I don't want to say snapped his fingers, but I just did. If God decided that the United States was going to be overthrown, guess what?

The United States is going to be overthrown no matter what we do, no matter what Assyria did. They were not about to stop what God had planned for them. Finally, they would show the lion dead on the side with arrows sticking out of them.

Again, a picture of what the enemies of Assyria would look like if they came to attack her. And I love this because, again, this is archaeological evidence that coincides with the biblical record. So when we go back to the biblical record and we read these things, we can point an unbeliever or even a believer. To the things that happened in history to show this is an actual historical fact that Assyria had the wall.

They were they were setting themselves up as lions. And here God addresses them as such. And Assyria and Nineveh was no more because God came in against them. Israelites knew the lion as a ruthless, almost unstoppable killer taking from the flock at will.

It frequently worked from ambush. But even when not actively hunting its roar, audible for miles, spread its fear abroad. I'm sure you've seen movies where they always, you know, they'll play the roar of a lion and that kind of like gets everybody's attention.

It's like, oh, there's a lion in town. The lion roars to let you know that he's in town and that he's not happy. So now the Israelites who were farmers and sheep herders were subject to a lion coming in and attacking their animals.

So this would be, you know, in the forefront of their mind. Now, Assyria is claiming to be like a lion. A significant portion of the reference to lion in scripture concerns its voice. The lion has roared.

Who will not fear? Right. So even in and that's in Amos, the roar of a lion. Is what strikes fear in the heart of people? Psalm 22, they open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. And when did Psalm 22 happen?

When prophetically, what was that pointing to? The crucifixion, right? He says I'm the psalmist says I'm surrounded by bulls. My heart melts like wax. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening lion.

They roar. What were the Jews shouting up at Jesus? If you're the son of God, get down from that cross, show us get down from that cross. What they didn't realize was earlier in I think it's the book of Matthew.

The last time Jesus heard you are the son of God was when he was baptized and the dove was was coming down. The Holy Spirit was coming out of him. Says you are the son of God whom I am well pleased. The next time he would hear the son of God, him being called the son of God, is when the Jews are yelling at him.

You're the son of God. Take yourself down from the cross. To Hebrew poets, the wicked acted like lions, like a lion. They will tear me apart. They will drag me away with no one to rescue any any allusions to the lion in the New Testament.

Sure, there is. The devil also preys on humanity as a roaring lion. First, Peter five, eight, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

Right. Thankfully, if you're one of God's people, the devil can't touch you. Right. Apart from God allowing it to happen. Right. Whatever God allows him to do to you is for your benefit. When when Peter came to Jesus and says, I'm going to follow you, Jesus tells him the Satan has to sift you like wheat.

But I have prayed for you. Right. If you have an intercessor, if you have a mediator with God, OK, and Jesus as your savior, he's the one interceding. He's the one praying for you such that these type of attacks don't happen.

The lion in the Old Testament evokes ferocity, destructive power and irresistible strength. It is described as a bold and valiant warrior. Ultimately, Scripture compares God himself in his destructive wrath with a lion in Hosea, chapter five, 14, for I will be like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to the house of Judah.

I even I will tear and go away. I will carry off and no one shall rescue. Now, this represents the justice of God giving a sinner what they deserve, an unrepentant sinner that's in rebellion to God such that when God says I'm against you, this is what's going to happen.

Now, God will turn into a lion towards you. He will tear you apart in that way. Isaiah 31, for thus says the Lord, for thus the Lord said to me as a lion or a young lion growls over his prey, and when a band of shepherds is called out against him, he is not terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise.

So the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the armies will come down to fight on Mount Zion and on its hill. God is like a lion towards his enemies. Revelation five, five, and one of the elders said to me, weep no more.

Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. Right. You heard of Jesus being a lion and a lamb. Obviously, he's the sacrificial lamb, but he's also Lord.

He's coming back. And when he comes back physically, it's going to be like a lion. And the same way a Syria is demolished and exiled from God's presence, the unbelievers, people who were in rebellion to God their whole lives, who've never repented, who've never bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and accepted the merciful offer of salvation.

They're going to be exiled. Why? Because now they have to pay for their own sin. Nahum tells us that the lions then of Nineveh would be destroyed. Verse 11 speaks of various stages in the development of lions.

The full grown lion, the young lion and the lioness and the cubs. Yet this whole family of the lions of Nineveh would soon be completely wiped out, according to Nahum. Just as lions go and hunt, strangle and kill their prey.

So Nineveh had behaved in the same kind of way towards all the surrounding nations. But this lions then would be completely obliterated. For three centuries, the Assyrian lion, Assyria, had cruelly crushed and torn armies and the peoples of nations around around him and had brought the booty and spoils of his conquest to his lair, which was Nineveh to feed his lionesses to feed his young lions and his whelps.

All of these have term. All these terms have referenced the people of Nineveh and had filled his dens and holes with the booty that was left with none to make him afraid. Assyria was as bold as a lion.

Now, who's called to be as bold as a lion in the New Testament? The church, right? We should be as bold as a lion. Fear of man is snare, but the righteous. How are we righteous? We are righteous by the imputation of Jesus's righteousness to our account.

So now that we're declared legally righteous in God's sight because of Jesus, it doesn't mean that we're actually righteous, that all of our actions are good. And righteous. OK, this is the process of sanctification where we work out in actuality what we've been declared legally.

OK, so we're righteous in the sense that we have the imputed righteousness of Christ. And because of that, we're God's children and we should be as bold as a lion. But now the Lord of hosts, the one who has the power to carry out his threats, says that he is against Assyria and will burn her chariots, her dreaded instruments of conquest.

He will destroy her young lions, her people with the sword and another instrument of conquest, cut off her prey and cut off her messengers where nothing disturbed them before. They will now be disturbed by God.

Remember what Nahum tells the the Israelites? Peace, peace. Go celebrate your feast, celebrate your sacrifices. I'm bringing peace to the land, peace to the Israelites, peace to the people in Judah. But no peace for the Assyrians.

He's going to destroy them. All right. Verse 12, the lion tore enough for his cubs, killed or strangled enough for his lionesses and filled his lairs with prey and his dens with torn flesh. These two verses together, 11 and 12, compare the city of Nineveh to a lion's den and its people to lions.

The lion was a favorite figure in Assyrian sculpture and in their inscriptions, the Assyrians often boasted of the cruel way they had treated people whom they have conquered. And we saw that in an earlier picture.

Thus, it is particularly apt that Nahum should use the habits of the lion as the basis for his comparison. He starts in verse 11 with a mocking question, which in effect rejoices over the fall of Nineveh.

Where is the lion's den now? Then he goes on in verse 12 with the description of the way the lion of Nineveh used to behave in the days of his power. So it went from Nahum is pointing out from what they were called to what they actually do.

This is how they behaved. They tore up cubs. They tore enough for cubs. They killed. They strangled others. Verse 12 continues the comparison of Nineveh with a group of lions and describes the conduct of the Assyrian soldiers in the past terms of a lion hunting to feed his family.

The first two lines are parallel to each other. The lion tore enough for his whelps, which is little lions, and strangled prey for his lionesses. Whelps is another word for the young of the lion, especially when they are very small.

The picture is of the lion killing some other animal and taking some of its meat back for the lionesses and their offspring to eat. The word strangled is probably best understood as a forceful way of expressing the general meaning to kill.

Lions do, in fact, strangle their prey by biting the biting the throat to cut off the air supply, especially when they attack larger animals. So again, we get this picture over and over and over again of a lion and Assyria acting like a lion.

What would they do? They would go in and attack the neck of their their opponent, strangle them, cut them off from all the other nations around them and bring destruction upon them. Two moments of the lion's behavior stand out in this verse, the brutality of his predatory ways and his instinct to provide for his clan.

Without concern for the feelings of his victims, the lion strips and shreds and tears flesh from his prey, whether living or dead, totally oblivious to the shrieks of agony coming from its victim. The predator plunges his bloody teeth again and again into the cringing flesh.

Having satisfied his immediate cravings, the beast drags the carcass to his lair, where all his bloodthirsty brood may join in the feast. Very graphic description of what a lion does. And again, the Assyrians were the most brutal nation, probably in history, based on the way they would kill people and conquer their enemies.

Human sensitivities recoil at the sight of such brutality among the beasts of the forest. But what is to be said when the same kind of behavior characterizes man made in the image of God? Remember, the Assyrians, every human being is created in the image of God.

And when an image bearer carries out these things, we see the extent of man's depravity. All right. Man is totally depraved, not completely depraved, but totally depraved. Depravity has affected the will, the intellect, the emotions.

It's affected every single area of the human such that now they invent ways of doing evil. They're vicious. They begin to act like animals. They begin to act like lions and the way they destroy their prey.

How could a human being made to reflect the compassion of the creator sink to such levels of bestiality? Yet is not merely a dramatic figure of speech that the prophet employs in his depictions of the Assyrian monarchs as stalking, prey hungry lions.

The kings of Nineveh themselves chose to memorialize their greatest feats in terms fitting only of the wild beasts of the earth. And it continues here. They suspended their corpses from poles, tore their skin off that's flaying and affixed it to the city walls.

I let dogs, swines, wolves, vultures, the birds of the heavens and the sweetwater fish devour their cut off limbs. The people who lived in the city and had not come out and had not acknowledged my rule, I slew.

I chopped off their heads and cut off their lips. I bored through his jaw with my cutting dagger, pulled the rope through his cheek and the sides of his face and attached a dog chain to him and let him guard the cage at the east gate of Nineveh.

This is horrific, this is what they actually did, but thankfully we have a God of justice, a God who's more powerful than that and will give them what they deserve, right? This is an actual historical fact.

Yes, Joe. They're not any prominent descendants of the Assyrians, they're all inbreeded. You know, there's no pure Assyrian. Again, God said he was going to destroy them, so they're basically wiped out.

Basically, the same way the Assyrians came in and wiped out Israel, and that's why they called the 10 lost tribes of Israel, because those tribes no longer exist. They intermarried, they became Samaritans, right?

Yeah. Samaritans, Samaritans, Samaritans. OK, so they came in and and diluted their lineage, diluted their genealogy such that there's there's no nation now known as Assyria. Assyria is gone. OK, and rightly so.

I mean, look at the way they they brutally treated people. These samples of brutality taken from the annals of only one of the kings of Nineveh could be multiplied easily. There's many, many, many kings that would write what they've done to people similar to this torture and inhumanity of the worst sort were a major characteristic of royal life.

For 200 years, they ravaged the various peoples of the ancient Near East, just as lions prowled daily for their prey. For years, Nineveh lived by force, the wealth of the nations flowed to Assyria and its army subjugated the peoples of the ancient Near East.

The annual tribute of vassal nations continually provided food and valuables for the people of Assyria. But where now was mighty Nineveh? Where now were the sculptures of the lions? Where now was Ishtar the lioness to protect them?

Nahum's message provided hope for Jerusalem. The ferocity of Nineveh would end. The Lord himself would deliver the people of Judah by destroying the lion of Assyria. And what we need to know is as we look around in the world today and we feel like we're being encroached upon, right, know that there's a sovereign God behind all this.

And if that sovereign God can destroy a nation like Assyria, Nineveh, OK, he can destroy whatever other nation decides to come against the church. We should have peace because we know who God is and what he's done for us.

He is the king ruling and reigning until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet. Life may not look like you like you thought it was going to look for you right now. Things may get difficult. But no, in Jesus Christ, we have peace with God.

We have forgiveness of sins. We'll be united to him forever and ever. Ultimately, there's only going to be one king ruling the entire earth, Jesus. So where most people are railing against, oh, my goodness, they're trying to set up a one world government.

I'm like, beautiful. Let them. Jesus is going to be the king of a one world government. The question is, are you part of that kingdom? You need to resolve that now. You need to repent, place your faith and trust in Jesus, acknowledge him as Lord King and trust in him as savior.

Again, such that when he died on that cross, you died with him. You were judged at the cross and declared innocent because of what Jesus did. Kiss the son lest he be angry. Verse 13, behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts.

I will burn up her chariots and smoke a sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the land and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard. Based on the way we just learned about Assyria and what Assyria did.

This should bring great joy to you that God is against them. He's not going to permit that to continue on the same way in today's world. God is not going to permit those people who were doing what they're doing to continue on.

There's going to be an ultimate day of judgment where he he he pronounces judgment upon them and then cast them out of his presence and they will never be heard from any longer. At the climax of this section comes the awful and unalterable declaration of the Lord of hosts.

Behold, I am against you. This expression is found 28 times in the Old Testament and is used when God is set to act against the people that has steadfastly refused to submit to him. No matter how powerful or numerous or wise the nation, no matter what precautions taken, these words would spell certain doom.

Again, when God says it, it's a guarantee it's going to happen. But for those who trust in God and seek refuge in him, the words apply. Verse chapter one, verse seven. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him.

If you're looking around today and saying, wow, today's a day of trouble, the church is under attack. The world has stooped to such lunacy such that they don't know what a man or a woman is. Trust in the Lord, right?

He knows those who take refuge in him. That's what we're supposed to cling to. We're not supposed to cling to a political party. We're not supposed to cling to the strength of an army. We're not supposed to cling to anything here in this world.

We're supposed to cling to him and him alone. OK, trust and obey. Right. We sang that last week. Trust in what the Lord says and just be faithful. Be faithful to do what he tells you to do. The voices of messengers with their hearty and arrogant demands of submission and tribute with their taunts and reproaches against God will never again be heard.

God will have the last word. God will always have the last word. When your faith and trust is in him, you are on God's side. The question is not to ask, what was God on my side? The question is, are you on God's side?

Jesus says you're either for me or against me. There's no neutrality. There's no middle ground. Well, I don't know. Jesus might be right. It might be wrong. It could be one of many religions. Jesus says you're against him.

You're either for me or against me. No middle ground. This is the silence of the lions. He's going to exalt the lambs. He's going to glorify. We're going to be glorified in Christ because the scriptures are the testimony of Jesus Christ.

This is the testimony. The scriptures are the testimony of Jesus Christ. This is his story. How he before the creation of the world was present, creating the world, bringing it to where it is today, coming in flesh to die on the cross for the sins of his people.

To rescue them. Ultimately, this is God's story and he will be vindicated. He will be glorified in it. So. Any questions? Difficult scripture to go through when you see just exactly what what lions were depicted as in the Old Testament and what they actually did, what Nineveh and Assyria actually did to their to their enemies.

OK, let's close in prayer. Well, Father in heaven, as we go through your word, Lord, how disturbing it is to know that there are there are people so depraved that they would do these things to other image bearers of God.

Father, first and foremost, we pray your mercy upon your church, that we would trust and obey, that we would hear your voice and do what you've told us to do. We even pray for our enemies, Lord, that you would have mercy upon them, help us to bless them and not persecute them, not harm them or God.

May we may we be lights to that generate to this generation of people, Lord, who don't know you such that they would come to know you. We pray your spirit would move upon minds and hearts throughout this land.

Lord, God, we're in such a desperate situation. We need your help. We pray that your church would rise up and meet the challenge. Father, we also pray for the worship service today. We know that worship is warfare.

We pray, Lord, that as we worship, you would be honored and blessed and you would bring your kingdom here on Earth as it is in heaven. Lord, may you be glorified today in Jesus name. Amen.